Can your nonprofit confidently say you’re efficiently closing the books on time each month—and even most months? As somebody who has labored on this business for greater than seven years, I’ve seen my justifiable share of financial institution reconciliation challenges. I do know a number of horrific recollections of looking for what was out of steadiness simply popped into my head!
What number of unsuccessful financial institution reconciliations does it take earlier than we consider our course of to be extra environment friendly? This doesn’t at all times imply spending more cash however discovering methods to let your accounting software program work higher for you. The expense administration instruments in your fund accounting system are an incredible instance of working smarter—not more durable—and using the performance constructed into the system to create these efficiencies.
That is the yr to finish these guide processes, human error, and dreadfully lengthy financial institution reconciliations. Listed here are 3 ways having expense administration instruments constructed into your fund accounting software program will assist streamline closing the books.
Automate Expense Requests and Credit score Card Matching
Each one who works for a nonprofit has wished there have been extra hours within the day. Manually including transactions, matching and clearing them, and monitoring down approvals could be time-consuming. These are widespread areas the place your nonprofit monetary groups might be automating processes and having extra time again in your workday.
Consider all of the hours you’d have again if cardholders might submit their very own prices for approval, should you might robotically obtain transactions, or if the system would match and clear transactions for you.
Expense administration instruments similar to built-in Credit score Card Feeds permit your cardholders to submit their very own prices for approval throughout the system. Your Finance or Board members might be self-sufficient in submitting their prices whereas nonetheless following a separation of duties, which provides your employees extra time to deal with their very own duties and helps you keep sturdy inside controls. Credit score Card Feeds then match your on-line checking account and mirror this knowledge because it robotically downloads transactions. Your accounting employees will be capable of see these transactions in real-time to remove the necessity to manually add them.
Incorporating expense administration instruments into your each day workflows permits your fund accounting software program to bear the brunt of manually including and matching transactions. It will allow your employees and cardholders to handle their very own prices by submitting them for approval, which can be robotically tracked throughout the system.Â
Reduce Human Error with Approval Guidelines
With tons of of steady transactions and stress over deadlines, human error is a serious danger when closing the books. With monetary automation, you’ll be able to cut back this danger and enhance effectivity. Moderately than spending hours double and triple-checking every transaction to make sure accuracy, you’ll be able to incorporate bank card feeds and customizable approval guidelines. Stopping danger and inaccuracies will reduce month-to-month exceptions and, over time, you will note enchancment within the time it takes to shut the books.
Accounting groups love to make use of spreadsheets, however sooner or later, we have to unify all our knowledge in a single spot and reap the benefits of performance constructed into your fund accounting software program. Incorporating the utilization of expense administration instruments will carry all of your transactions into one verified location the place you’ll be able to pull correct monetary statements for Board Members and different stakeholders, giving everybody in your group a single supply of reality.
Monitoring down approvals throughout an audit could be demanding sufficient, so expense administration instruments can hold a log of adjustments as a cost or bill request goes by means of its approval path. Utilizing personalized approval guidelines for every cardholder will reduce the priority for human error and danger when approving expensive transactions. Some errors could also be inevitable on the subject of closing the books, however you’ll be able to reduce these errors once you take away guide knowledge entry.
Create Extra Worth to Your Important Software program
Nonetheless paying for disparate methods? Utilizing a necessary fund accounting software program ought to imply you will have the elemental workflows in place with out having to outsource for each job. Expense administration instruments can permit you to incorporate bank card prices and invoices—with paperwork connected—into your accounts payable processing in a single spot. You may take away the necessity for housing knowledge in decentralized areas.
 Create extra worth together with your fund accounting system through the use of expense administration instruments. These instruments have built-in automation and performance for all of your employees and cardholders to undertake. When your system is user-friendly, your employees and cardholders will shortly acknowledge the time financial savings. You may incorporate expense administration instruments that permit you to increase your return on funding and be assured within the knowledge you present for audits. You may cut back compliance dangers and provide you with extra time to deal with strategic planning. There’s worth in having full confidence that your fund accounting software program works for all your corporation wants.
It’s Time to Automate Day by day Workflows
Your monetary workforce can create extra worth with expense administration instruments by automating processes, minimizing danger, and having profitable month-to-month financial institution reconciliations. With these instruments, you may make closing the books extra streamlined and Expense Administration could be that answer in your group.
Wish to see Expense Administration in motion? Be a part of our specialists in a full deep dive of the module together with our Finest Practices and suggestions for how one can get began as we speak.